She examined it. What a dul thing it looked now. How gladly at that moment would she have given it to Amy’s mother, to that woman who’d had so many reasons, so much time, to believe that she was entitled to it. She wasn’t going to think il of Richie now, she wasn’t going to waste precious energies on stacking up the case against him, nor was she going to do the same for Chrissie. Amy hadn’t talked much about Chrissie except to say that she hoped she real y would take this job and this flat, and start to lead her own life at last, but Margaret had had the strong sense that when Richie died he’d left his castle in London and the people it contained grievously undefended. Amy, of course, was in no place to see that yet, might not see it for years, but already she seemed to want a freedom for her mother, a wish Margaret much approved of, a wish that suggested, at the very least, that life with Richie, for al its beguiling charms, had not made al owances for much liberty in the lives around him.
She slipped the ring on to her wedding finger. It lodged itself on her second knuckle and, although it could be persuaded, with difficulty, to slide al the way down, there seemed no point in its doing so. She took it off and laid it on the dressing table. In the morning, she thought, on her way to work
– she would walk to work, whatever the weather – and to tel Glenda the news about the future, she would cross the grass as she had just done, and then the road, and she would scramble down the shal ow cliff slope, holding the ring, and when she got to the bottom, as a mark of respect to the past and al it represented, but also as a gesture of finality, a signal that the past was now over, she would throw the ring into the sea.
Joanna Trollope is the author of fifteen highly acclaimed bestselling novels. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire, Britannia’s Daughters, as well as a number of historical novels. Born in Gloucestershire, she now lives in London. She was awarded the OBE in the 1996 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Visit her website at www.joannatrollope.com
Copyright © 2010 Joanna Trollope
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2010 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, and in the United Kingdom by Doubleday, a division of Random House Group (UK) and in the U.S. by Touchstone, a division of Simon and Schuster. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.
www.randomhouse.ca
Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Trollope, Joanna
The other family / Joanna Trollope.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37426-4
I. Title.
PR6070.R57O82 2010 823′.914 C2009-905010-2
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other books by This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
Copyright
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The Other Family Page 30